World of Warcraft Movie

We've heard so much about the BlizzCon movie over the past few years and now's the time to hear even more. Get ready for the BlizzCon movie panel where we'll hear the first details about WoW's expansion into the cinematic territory.

Unfortunately this panel didn't provide much new information. One thing, however, is clear: almost every staff member including the director is a huge WoW fan and it will remain true to the universe.

BlizzCon Contests

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It's Orcs vs. Humans. The story that is most important to tell is the first contact. It's Lothar and Durotan.

The movie is over two years away from being released, a lot of what will be covered today is what preproduction is going on.

Duncan Jones is an avid World of Warcraft fan with a huge background in online gaming. When he first saw the script, it was heavily Alliance and he felt it should be equal.

A big problem is that they want the orcs to be as sympathetic as the humans. It also needs to be accessible to everyone--even non-fans.

It will be live action with CGI. Think Avatar meets Game of Thrones. Orcs will be using real actors with motion capturing.

It's about getting the root of the games and its origins. They can't talk about the exact plot, but that is what they are aiming for.

They have artwork of Draenor, Dalaran, Ironforge, Stormwind.

There's so many design constraints that demand things when making a game; you have to worry about player traffic, amount of NPCs, and so on. But with movie production, they are free to make the world like how it should look. Make it more cinematic, more grand, bigger.

The character that is the most famous in World of Warcraft is the world itself.

Costuming is really interesting--they have to make costumes for the orcs and their actors, even though they're just motion captured actors.

Q&A

You've talked about the world, but what about the music?Music is as important to us, the music is really big in the game.

Will you be able to keep the Blizzard style intact even though the armor is very unrealistic?Yes--we're working hard to find that fine line where it's believable and works.

Are there any plans for an art book?No plans, but definitely an option.

Since you're filming in January, do you have any cast worked out?Yep, but can't say anything.

Can you cast Chuck Norris?I think the question is can I not cast him?

Are you still casting? I'm an actor...

Could it be a trilogy?We want to make sure we tell the story first. If it works out, then definitely continuing it.

Will this be based on the Eastern Kingdom?The majority of the tale will take in place in familiar locales that we may or may not know as the Eastern Kingdoms.

There's a lack of strong female characters, but WoW usually does well with that. What about Garona, Sylvanas, etc? So far everyone mentioned has been male.It's been hard because it's mostly men in the older game. We're trying to work on it and add more women to the game. Women should be in our movie, you will be pleased.

When's the soonest we can see a preview?I would say next year.

Why a movie and not a TV show?Metzen wants one. Back in 2006, they wanted to do a movie--it was way before fantasy in TV was proven. Game of Thrones wasn't around. So if they were starting over again, maybe they would have done it.

Will we be able to order tickets to the movie on Battle.net and what pet will we get? We'll have to make sure to write that one down.

Warcraft is hallowed ground, are you taking this movie as seriously as they took Lord of the Rings?Those movies were groundbreaking. They were masterpieces. they inspired everyone. Anything we do has to match or beat that.

Stereo conversion vs native? Opinion?3D is obviously important for some people, for example, Gravity was amazing. We're looking into it--we want to release in both. Director is a 2D fan.

Do you need someone to flesh out Orcish?We have someone who is fleshing out orcish, he's worked on movies like Avatar. The language will really come to life, there will be more than in the game.

What tone and writing will this have? What is it meant to appeal to--rating?Probably PG-13. The Batman movies were PG-13, you can get away with a lot of stuff in PG-13.